Survey: Multiple-Choice Questions

Demographic Questions

Researchers use multiple-choice survey questions when they ask questions about a person’s demographic characteristics, such as race, socioeconomic class, or political affiliation. These questions can be ordered or non-ordered. For both ordered and non-ordered questions, it is a good idea to use pre-existing categories, such as what might be used on census questionnaires or polls. Ordered questions, such as those asked about income, classification in college, or educational level, tend to have less complex response options as seen in the following example:

What classification are you in college?

• a.
  Freshman
• b.
  Sophomore
• c.
  Junior
• d.
  Senior
• e.
  Graduate Student

With characteristics such as race, in which there is no particular order to the response options, there are many different ways to ask respondents about them, as is recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau, which is considering alternate ways to ask about race and ethnicity in the 2020 census.

Behavioral Questions

When researchers wish to gather information on behaviors of a respondent, they are asking respondents to report on something they have already done or experienced. For example, a researcher could ask respondents who they voted for in the last presidential election, listing the possible presidential candidates as response options from which respondents could choose one option. This is an example of a non-ordered multiple-choice survey question, in which only one answer is allowed.

Researchers can also use multiple-choice survey questions with possible responses that are ordered or time-sequenced in some way, as seen in the following question:

How often have you eaten out in the past week with friends?

• a.
  Not at all
• b.
  1–2 times
• c.
  3–4 times
• d.
  5+ times

When asking these types of questions, it is best to have respondents recall behavior over a limited and recent time period, in order for them to more accurately report their behavior.

If the response options are ordered, choosing one answer makes the most sense, since rarely would respondents need to choose more than one answer for such questions. However, there are other times when researchers want to see how many times a particular answer is chosen, so they allow respondents to choose multiple answers, in order to better gauge the respondents’ behaviors or perceptions, such as when companies ask clients how they heard about their company, as in the following

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